And England give their coach the boot. At least that’s the case according to ‘reports’.

We’re not actually suggesting that the two events are linked. We’re just struck by the fact that we’ve been sitting around checking the cricket news once every four minutes for the whole of the last week only for something to happen the minute we step away.

A watched Cricinfo never breaks news, as the old adage goes.

Some of you are suggesting we should have some sort of official stance on this development, but, like we say, we have had a pint. It was called ‘long hop’ funnily enough.

There’s a suggestion that Flower might take up some other job within the ECB. Doubt he’ll be running the website, so maybe he’ll become ‘mega-director’ or ‘stategist emperor’ or something, in which case his not being coach will seem less significant. We don’t know. We haven’t even finished reading the article yet. We’ve been otherwise engaged.

31 Appeals

You’re no better clued up than those of us who have been refreshing Twitter for the last two hours. As usual it’s full of journalists clapping each other on the back for writing “exclusive” stories with no attribution or confirmation.

Although we have had Flowers since, our impressions of it are forever sullied by the fact that a ‘creamflow’ version of it was what was served in a dingy nightclub in York we occasionally frequented some 15 years ago.

James Watney, Jim Cumbes, Chris Read, George Mann…this pun on beer and cricket history is assisted (two of the four) by the tendency back in the day for the offspring/relatives of beer barons to play first class cricket.

Fred Truman’s

Luke Wells

Jamie Theakston’s Old Peculiar radio show

Omari Banks

It is certainly hard to top “Chimay Anderson” in the pun department…my best shot…the masterblaster himself…

…and if you can be bothered to go through the link I added from Lawrence Booth’s “The Spin” column in 2003 you’ll see that Mr Booth had some very amusing things to say on the subject more than 10 years ago…

…very astute KC readers will spot the hidden Ged Ladd selfie in that Lawrence Booth link. Answers on an e-postcard!

haha… oh yes of course. hmm, well, i hadn’t seen the grauniad piece before (most amusing), but i do recall reading that KC article now it is dangled before me again… which is a bit embarrassing really. that’s less than two years ago, so evidently my memory is not quite as good as i thought it was. (2012… my use of the funny green stuff got a bit out of control for a while back there. that’s my excuse… now, wonder what else i forgot?!)

but how could i forget carlisle best commentating on his own shots? psych boys would love to get their teeth into that one i’m sure… the fragmented concentration involved in doing such a thing out loud *whilst actually facing* maybe hints at why he only played eight tests…